26.10.2011

Brand Positioning: A simple Smith story

Brief
EfacRe – an idea developed by an in-house think tank was aimed at streamlining R&SA's re-insurance buying.

By placing its tendering online, reinsurance could be procured in a more efficient manner, at more competitive rates, and provide a safer, more comprehensive information and management resource to track policy process. The brief was to communicate this change of working method to a traditional and sceptical audience, internally and through their broker network.

Solution
Market research indicated the key barriers to adoption would be fear of complexity, breaches of confidentiality and a lack or transparency in the bidding process.

From this we created three 'values' for the new system; safe simple and open. These 'brand values' were then used to explain both the system benefits and how it actually worked. The product was to be called EfacRe – short for electronic facultative reinsurance, hardly a name to roll of the tongue so we developed a strapline which explained the idea quickly and clearly; 'Reinsurance reinvented' – this was used as the copyline to drive the whole campaign.

Application
Potentially confusing technical and financial information was communicated in a simple, clear and easy to understand style using a set of 'digital' illustrated characters. Designed to reflect the transition to working online, the characters were used to navigate the different audiences through step-by-step system walkthroughs on a bespoke micro-intranet site and to 'face-up' promotional materials. A secure intranet was developed to launch the new scheme and lead users through a simple click-through trial of the new tendering process. The site was part educational and part promotional.